Nowadays, liquid crystal display (LCD) panels are widely applied to various electronic products with growth potential, such as monitors, notebook computers, digital cameras and projectors. After manufacturers of LCD panels fabricate glass substrates, a color filter is firstly combined with the glass substrates, then liquid crystals are filled into the sealed glass substrates and color filter, and further combined with various components, including a backlight module, driver ICs, controller PCBs and etc., to commonly construct a LCD module for selling to downstream manufacturers of notebook computers or LCD monitors.
The backlight module is one of key components of LCD panels. Because the liquid crystals can not emit light by itself, the function of the backlight module is to provide evenly distributed light sources with sufficient brightness for normally showing images. The backlight module comprises various components, such as light sources, a lamp shade, a reflector plate, a light guide plate, a diffusion sheet, a brightness enhancement film and an outer frame.
Generally, the backlight module can be divided into two types, i.e. front light type and back light type. According to scale requirement of the back light type, lamp positions thereof can be divided and developed into edge lighting type structure and bottom lighting type structure, wherein light emitting sources of the edge lighting type structure are a single light source mounted on one side position, and the light emitting sources of the bottom lighting type structure are mounted on a bottom position. The light sources of the bottom lighting type structure are preferably lamps, light emitting diodes (LEDs) and etc.
The lamps of the backlight module must have properties including high brightness and long lifetime, and can be cold cathode fluorescent lamps (CCFL), hot cathode fluorescent lamps (HCFL), light emitting diodes (LED), electro-luminescent sheets (EL) and etc., wherein the CCFL lamps has properties including high luminance, high efficiency, long lifetime, high color rendering index and etc., while it has a column-shape profile. Thus, it can be easily installed with a light reflecting element to construct a thin plate illumination device, so that the CCFL lamps are still the mainstream design now.
Furthermore, the clamping and conducting devices for the lamps are essential components of backlight modules using the lamps as back light sources. Presently, traditional clamping and conducting devices include the following types:
(1) a lamp is sandwiched between two metal plates, and then a third component is used to tightly clamp the lamp, so as to carry out the installation and the electrical conduction. This type of device has disadvantages including too many fabricated components and too low impact resistance;
(2) a lead wire of an end of a lamp is additionally provided with a metal cap, and then an elastic metal plate is used to tightly clamp the metal cap, so as to carry out the installation and the electrical conduction. This type of device has disadvantages including too many fabricated components and too high manufacture cost of the metal cap; or
(3) an end of a lamp is provided with a soft rubber pad, and a lead wire is wound and passed through a through hole of the soft rubber pad for being welded with the lamp. This type of device has disadvantages including too complicated installation and too inconvenient detachment.
As described above, the traditional clamping and conducting devices have disadvantages including too complicated installation steps, too low impact resistance, too many and too complicated components and too high manufacture cost.
As a result, it is necessary to provide a backlight module and a lamp installation device thereof to solve the foregoing problems of the traditional technology.